Game recommendation

Firstly, I have to admit that my keyboard is broken, and I have yet to leave the house to get a new laptop, or just a new keyboard, so here you will find me typing out numbers and seeming very deadpan, as it is just the top numbers and symbols that do not work. I could win the lottery and post about it, and it will look like this:

I won the lottery. Yay.

So, if I come off as very bored, now you know why. I promise, eventually I will get out and get a new one, or at least order one from amazon.

Back to the original point.

Night in the Woods. Holy crap. What can I say about this game that hasn’t already been said? I finally finished it up, and I couldn’t be more satisfied with a game. Now, I will do my best to leave out any spoilers, so if you have yet to play it and don’t want anything spoiled, it is best you leave now.

The game centers on Mae Borowski as our playable character. She is a pansexual, college dropout.

Mae comes home to have a “return to normalcy” so to speak, only to find out everything and everyone, including her friends in Possum Springs, have changed. Her friends include a hyperactive fox named Greggory, Greg’s boyfriend, a large bear named Angus, and a gothic crocodile named Bea.

You spend the majority of this game hanging out with your friends, and when you just say that, it sounds boring, but it’s not. These characters are very deep, and incredibly interesting, and I have to admit that there is a certain scene with Gregg in the woods that brought on the tear factor. You really find yourself feeling bad for all of them, as they all have their own problems, and to top it all off, you find yourself identifying with them. Me? I am totally Bea, minus dressing in all black.

The center of the game revolves around solving a big mystery. The answer to this mystery is a death cult of dads.

I think what I really enjoyed about this is that it is a “coming of age” game, but not in the way one expects a coming of age anything to be. When most people hear that term, they think “Blue Lagoon” type stuff, with the growth from children to teenagers, etc. This is a coming of age from teenager to adult, and learning that nothing ever stays the same. The childlike innocence that we all go through and pine for will always turn into adult problems. Nothing ever stays the same.

To hammer home this point, and by far my favorite part of the game, is the music. I have no idea who did the music for the game, and I really should look into it, because this person is talented. There wasn’t one moment in the game where I felt the music was out of place. There were plenty of moments where the music tugged at your soul and fit so well, one can’t help but tear up.

There is a scene with Gregg out in the woods, and he and Mae are talking about his past. The music here, which I will link, was beautifully done, and even listening to it outside of the game, one will find themselves reminiscing a time long since passed. I certainly did. It made me long for the days when I was young, and would play with my sister and cousins up in my grandparents’ woods, back when life was easy. Since then both grandparents have passed on, and I at age thirty-three, am the youngest of the cousins. Time really does go by too fast, and before you know it, it’s all over.

In all honesty, and this is a huge thing for me to say, but I would put the music of this game right up there with Chrono Trigger.

Yeah.

I said it.

That’s huge, because Chrono Trigger is one of the best games ever made, and the consensus is that the music from the game is top notch.

I am not saying the music from Night in the Woods is better, but it is definitely right up there with one of the all-time greats.

Should you find yourself wanting a different kind of game, definitely give this one a shot. You’ll laugh. You’ll tear up, and when it’s over, you’ll feel a big sense of satisfaction, with a slight hole in your soul because you wish there were more. It’s definitely a game where you leave feeling like you know the characters on a personal level. They almost feel real.

And in a sense, they are, because you will see yourself and your friends in these characters. Even though they are walking, talking animals, they are the most human characters I have seen in a game, in such a long time.